Christoph von Wolzogen. Karl Friedrich Schinkel

•  The first comprehensive biography of Karl Friedrich Schinkel!
• 2 volumes, bound in cloth with dust jacket, in printed slipcase.
• Experience Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Prussia's most important master builder, and the many facets of his time. The first comprehensive biography of this pioneering universal artist.
• The biography is the special recommendation of the month October 2016 by Jens Bisky in the non-fiction section of the Südeutsche Zeitung and NDR!

Description

The ringing of bells made him melancholy. As a child, he experienced the firestorm in his hometown. Throughout his life, he followed the motto of his teacher Friedrich Gilly: to tear down with understanding and rebuild with care.

He gave the state of Prussia its physiognomy and the world new ideas about architecture, art and design. Considering the sheer volume of designs, expert opinions and inquiries from all over Europe, one wonders how he also found time for his family. He died in 1841 at the age of 61. He never completed his second panorama painting, which was intended to depict the architecture of world history.

Schinkel's work is considered to be well researched. However, the literature on the life of this universal artist is still based on a few publications from the 19th century. Unknown sources have been found in international archives that show Schinkel's biography and his work in a completely new light. They have been systematically analyzed here for the first time.

On the 175th anniversary of his death, Christoph von Wolzogen presents the first comprehensive and critical biography of Schinkel and places the great designer and man in the panorama of his time.

Comments on the book:

"The whole thing is composed and staged, indeed it has the character of a work of art."
Helmut Börsch-Supan

"Schinkel biography spectacularly rich in material and ideas"
Rüdiger von Treskow

"I see a series of highly elegant essays in which you approach the person of Schinkel, starting from the occasions of his works, but also abstract questions, [...] always reaching out in all directions. As I said, it reads well. And it is also amusing because, in detail, old findings are repeatedly called into question. [...] In any case, Schinkel has now received what I would like to call a philosophical-personal biography, including his network ... and I have an idea of the state of mind of 1/2 a generation after me."
Goerd Peschken

About the author

Christoph von Wolzogen

Adjunct professor of philosophy at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, studied design at the HfG Offenbach, art history (with Gottfried Kiesow, among others), philosophy and modern German literature (with Ralph Rainer Wuthenow, among others) in Frankfurt. Wrote for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Neue Zürcher Zeitung and Literarische Welt. Numerous publications, including foreword to Adrian Frutiger Der Mensch und seine Zeichen, diaries of the architect and later Weimar minister Wilhelm von Wolzogen from his time in Paris 1788-1793, monograph on the history of education as media history.

In a private archive he found a diary by Schinkel's brother-in-law Wilhelm Berger, which he wrote during an official trip he undertook to Italy on Schinkel's behalf in 1823, and whose systematic indexing was the reason for this biography.

Facts

• Edition Fichter, Frankfurt am Main 2016
• 2 volumes, bound in cloth with dust jacket, in printed slipcase.
• Approx. 880 pages, over 100 illustrations
• 24 x 17 cm,
• 2.5 kg
• ISBN: 978-3-943856-33-0

Keywords

Prussia; Berlin; Humboldt; Classicism; Romanticism; Prussia; Architecture